Apple WWDC 2025: 5 Highlights - Siri AI Evolves into a Full-Featured Assistant

TAIPEI (Central News Agency) - Apple Inc. today announced several major updates at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), unveiling a strategy centered on its next-generation personal intelligence system, Apple Intelligence. This move responds to external skepticism about Apple's slower pace in generative AI.

Demonstrating its vertical integration capabilities, Apple is transforming AI into a ubiquitous, system-level tool, reshaping the everyday user experience across iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Here are the five key highlights compiled by Central News Agency.

**Context-Aware Siri AI**

The most anticipated technological leap at this WWDC is the complete overhaul of the voice assistant Siri, upgraded to "Siri AI." It is no longer just a passive question-answering tool but a multimodal assistant with persistent memory, personal context understanding, on-screen awareness, and image comprehension.

On the iPhone, users can swipe down from the Dynamic Island at the top of the screen to switch to text input for communicating with Siri AI. On the Mac, it is deeply integrated into the Spotlight search tool and system menus. Siri AI's conversation history syncs via iCloud, enabling a cross-device experience where users can "ask a question on iPhone, see results on iPad, and continue processing on Mac."

For example, when a user sees a concert poster photo and asks about the artist's showtime, Siri AI can proactively search the web for the date and set a ticket-buying reminder upon command. If a user asks for a friend's new address, Siri AI can automatically check past message history and directly input the address into a navigation route, seamlessly blending on-screen awareness, personal private data, and map information.

**Cross-Device 'Visual Intelligence' Experience**

Apple is actively building a cross-device "Visual Intelligence" experience, attempting to create an ecosystem moat that third-party apps will find difficult to replicate, leveraging deep device integration and hardware privacy advantages.

Tailored application scenarios for Visual Intelligence exist for different hardware platforms. On the iPhone, it is integrated into the Camera app, allowing users to point at a meal to get nutritional information or scan a restaurant bill to split it with friends.

On the Mac, selecting any content on the screen allows Siri to understand and perform corresponding actions, such as automatically converting a complex shift schedule displayed on the screen into calendar events.

Beyond visual perception, Apple Intelligence also introduces a system-wide "Writing Tool." It can draft emails using natural language, automatically perform spell checks and grammar corrections, and learn the user's writing style. For example, in emails or messages, it will automatically adjust the tone based on the recipient's identity, switching to concise bullet points for a supervisor.

**Older Models Get iOS 27**

Most surprisingly, Apple's engineering team has backported the more efficient CPU scheduler from the next-generation iPhone to older models, supporting at least the iPhone 11. This optimization ensures that the new iOS 27 operating system maintains the same hardware support list as iOS 26, allowing long-time users of older iPhones to upgrade smoothly without buying a new device.

The update brings noticeable improvements in system operation and content loading speeds. Through key data preloading technology, app launch speeds on iPhone and iPad have increased by 30%, the speed at which newly taken photos appear in the photo library has increased by 70%, AirDrop wireless file sharing speed has increased by 80%, and file transfer speed from iPad to an external hard drive has increased by 5 times.

Furthermore, the core search indexes for Spotlight, Photos, and Mail have been restructured to effectively prevent crashes and freezes when switching between Wi-Fi and mobile networks, significantly enhancing overall system stability and responsiveness.

**Deep AI Infrastructure Alliance with Google**

At the foundational level, Apple Intelligence is built upon Apple Foundation Models, which were developed in deep collaboration with Google, incorporating advanced technology from the Gemini family and optimized for Apple silicon. This includes both on-device models and server-side "Private Cloud Compute."

Apple emphasizes that "privacy first" is a non-negotiable principle. When complex tasks require sending data to the private cloud, the system ensures the data is never stored and is completely unreadable by Apple, used only for the immediate request. Apple also states that external independent experts can verify this privacy commitment at any time.

Other system updates include Safari's new ability to automatically group tabs by topic, a "Passwords" feature that can proactively log users into websites and update compromised passwords, and a "Photos" app with an upgraded cleanup tool and a "Spatial Remaster" feature that uses generative AI to automatically extend the image frame.

Apple Intelligence is expected to launch in beta later this year with new operating systems, initially supporting only English. Due to regulatory restrictions, it will be delayed initially for iOS and iPadOS in the EU and the Chinese market. Some server-intensive AI features, like image generation, will have daily usage limits, and future advanced access will be tied to an iCloud+ subscription.

**Cook's Emotional Farewell Speech**

At the end of the keynote, outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook delivered an emotional summary speech. He stated that while the world is at a new technological inflection point, Apple's goal has never changed: to create the best products in the world that provide experiences enriching people's lives.

Cook said it has been the honor of his life to work alongside teams that continue to impact people's lives through creativity, care, and conviction to advance this mission. "I truly believe the best is yet to come," he concluded. (Editor: Pan Yi-jing) 1150609